Central govt officials pause work to recite 1-hour ‘Seva Sankalp’ pledge

ALl telephone exchange regime officials go down apart an time of day on Monday, March 2 to recite, in groups, the three-page resolution adopted by the Union cabinet during the first meeting in the new Prime Minister’s Office(PMO) Seva Teerth, last week; and then discuss it.Called the Seva Sankalp Resolution, the pledge is a mission statement of sorts for the government -- reflecting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision for nation building and serving each of the country’s 1.4 billion citizens.All departments have been asked to give a report to cabinet secretariat by Tuesday listing details of Monday’s activity and what emerged from it.“Ministries/ Departments are requested to organize a meeting of officers of their respective ministry/ department on 02.03.2026 (Monday), wherein this resolution may be read. Subsequently, discussions may be held on the resolution and methods to implement it,” the cabinet secretariat said in a memo.The memo went out to all secretaries last week. While taking a pledge isn’t unusual-- bureaucrats take an anti corruption and vigilance pledge every year -- the length of this one is considerably longer than the usual couple of paragraphs that bureaucrats usually take. Some officers, on condition of anonymity, also said that the mandatory discussion that was slotted may not have been the best use of everyone’s time. Several ministries such as the aviation ministry and the ministry of external affairs are among those that have been busy tackling the fallout of the war that broke out in West Asia over the weekend. Prime Minister Modi, too, convened a meeting of the cabinet committee of security soon after landing in the Capital late night on Sunday.HT reached out to Satendra Singh, additional secretary in the cabinet secretariat, who signed this letter but didn’t receive any response till the paper went to print.“It was a little awkward because no one was quite sure of what we were supposed to do,’’ said a senior official that HT spoke to after the pledge-reading and the discussion. A second official said that the pledge-reading was a regular meeting that took place in their conference room in the ministry, declining to give further details.As reported by HT on Wednesday, the cabinet adopted the Seva resolution to “enhance India’s pride as the Mother of Democracy.”Elaborating how the move from South Block to Seva Teerth was going to change the work ethic for its inhabitants, the resolution said, “The concept of Seva Teerth is formed from the confluence of both these ideals. With the sacred confluence of duty, service, and dedication, this workplace is envisioned to be as sacred as a pilgrimage, this is its fundamental spirit.”